Xi-Putin Summit: ‘Loud thunder but few raindrops’
photo credit twitter Sergey Radchenko
By Manish Anand
New Delhi, March 22: Beyond photo-ops, Xi Jinping and Vladmir Putin Summit in Moscow was described by strategic affairs academician Sergey Radchenko using Chinese proverb as “loud thunder but few raindrops”. He added that even thunder wasn’t loud enough.
Xi concluded his three-day visit to Russia after firm handshakes with Putin. Russian President is now a global pariah. He is scouted by very few international leaders. For that matter, Putin was glad that Xi came calling, but strategic affairs commentators are leaning to the view that the Chinese ruler had to leave Moscow disappointed, as Kremlin possibly didn’t let Beijing gain open access to the energy treasure trove in Siberia and Arctic Circle, which is much coveted by China.
Putin is stated to have been cold to the push of Xi for ‘Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)’ to build transnational infrastructure. Xi in his third term as the ruler of the Communist China is again seeking to rework the BRI project to save it from floundering after the fiasco in South Asia and Latin America where he has lost money heavily.
While Xi laid emphasis on no scope for nuclear war in Ukraine during his joint presser with Putin, Russian President was not ready to eat from the hands of his Chinese counterpart. “…Putin evidently decided to poke Xi in the eye by claiming, during their joint press conference, that the UK was planning to supply nuclear components (depleted uranium) to Ukraine, forcing Russia to react accordingly. This not very subtle nuclear saver (sabre)-rattling that seemingly contradicts commitments about the inadmissibility of nuclear war, is trademark Putin. I don’t think Xi liked being ambushed quite in this way,” commented Radchenko.
The commentators have also turned their lenses on the absence of the mention of “no limits friendship” in the joint statement issued on the conclusion of Xi visit. The US and other western nations had already stated loudely that they had no expectations from Xi’s Moscow visit for any breakthrough on the Ukraine War. Xi, predictably, had no contact with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Former foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal sought to dissect the significance of Xi visit by reflecting on the oil and gas trade between Russia and China and also of the arms. China has been accused of supplying arms to Russia clandestinely to avoid western sanctions.
“Lenin and other Soviet theorists used to write about imperialist exploitation of the ‘Third World’ by paying cheap prices for raw materials that created unfair dependencies. I wonder how they would write about Chinese-Russian economic relations today,” wondered former US diplomat Michael McFaul, who also leaned on claims that China has been seeking to buy Russian energy resources cheap to fuel the reopening of its economy, which possibly was the chief mission of Xi in Moscow on which he was possibly left disappointed.
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